Business process management (BPM) is the aligning of an organization and its operation with the organization's objective(s) and/or the wants, needs, or requirements of the organization's clients or consumer's of the organization's goods or services. BPM may include the modification of computer-executed processes.
For example, FIG. 1 shows the modification of an existing process according to known methods. At 1, an existing process is accessed. The scope and operation of such a process is virtually unlimited and will vary, of course, based on the particular technology and field of endeavor at hand. For example, the process may involve the optimization and searching of a database. In such a case, Task 1 of the existing process may be to optimize the database, Task 2 may be to search the database based on one or more search terms, and Task 3 may be to report the search results in a particular format. At 2, one or more tasks are selected from a collection of pre-defined task templates and added to the existing process. The result 3 is an updated process that includes the added pre-defined task.
According to known methods, the addition of a pre-defined task to an existing task is accomplished using an application programming interface (API). Some APIs, such as International Business Machine Corporation's Websphere® Process Server (WPS) Task API, utilize raw code to create such tasks. These APIs are difficult to master and use and require a new code base for each new context.
Another deficiency of known methods is the limitation of the tasks to be added to pre-defined tasks. In some cases, the particular task that is needed does not yet exist (i.e., it has not been pre-defined). In such a case, modification of the process to include the needed task requires that the task first be defined and added to the pre-defined tasks available to a user. This results in significant delay in managing the process and will generally incur additional expense.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.